George Bacovia - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Literary critics initially classified Bacovia as a Symbolist, but later criticism has argued that he transcended his milieu to form a part of modern Romanian poetry. Even if his first volume of poetry, Plumb (1916), was heavily marked by the influence of the Symbolists, his subsequent volumes, such as Scântei galbene, show his discovery of a more modern poetic concept, closer to the prose-poem than to the classic verse forms of the 19th century. Interwar critics saw in Bacovia either a Neosymbolist (George Călinescu) or a minor poet with insufficient material (E. Lovinescu). Just after the Second World War, however, Bacovia's poetry began to be linked to newer currents of thought, being linked with and compared to the theatre of the absurd (M. Petroveanu), poetic modernism, surrealism, automatic writing, imagism, expressionism, and even philosophic movements like existentialism (Ion Caraion). Bacovia thus succeeded in becoming recognized as one of the most important Romanian poets, an author who executed a vast canonical leap from minor poet to enduring classic of Romanian literature.

Alone,alone

at a faraway inn even the innkeeper's asleep the streets are desolate, Alone, alone

Raining,raining,

drinking weather and to listen to the wilderness what bittersweetness, Raining, raining

No one,no one, even better

it's been so, so long since anyone's heard from me, No one,no one

Forever and ever, wanderings henceforth

will beckon no more dreams, frost covered Forever and ever

"Slow" "Rar" - Bacovia, Translation D.Ileana